Electronically steered phased array antennas are used extensively in a variety of terrestrial, airborne and spaceborne communication systems and networks. Because of the diversity of applications, the rate at which the composite beam produced by an electronically steered phased array antenna requires updating can vary from a very low update rate (e.g, on the order of only one or two Hz) to very rapid pointing angle update rates (e.g., on the order of hundreds of kHz or more). Where the array employs a relatively large number of (antenna and associated phase shift) elements (on the order of a thousand or more, as a non-limiting example), especially systems with high update rates that are controlled by a single `broadcasting` array controller/processor, not only is there a substantial computational intensity burden placed on the controller, but the wiring configuration between the controller and the phase shift elements of the array can become very complex and costly.
One way to reduce such cost and hardware penalties associated with the use of a centralized array controller is to distribute the beam steering processing among a number of subarray controllers, each of which is responsible for computing phase weights for only a given portion or subset of the array. In order to compensate for the propagation delay through respective subarray controllers and the differential delays among signal paths between the controllers and the array elements driven thereby, it is customary practice to buffer the computational results of subarray processing in associated memory units, and then simultaneously read out the steering weight data stored in each memory unit for its associated subarray weight set. A principal drawback to the use of such auxiliary memories is the fact that not only do they constitute significant additional hardware, but limit the phased array's effective update rate, since, until the calculation results stored in the memory units are read out and cleared, each subarray controller is unable to receive and begin processing new or updated steering vector data.